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Incarnate

From IMDB:
A scientist with the ability to enter the subconscious minds of the possessed must save a young boy from the grips of a demon with powers never seen before, while facing the horrors of his past.

Review:

I was fuming by the time I left the theatre.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I absolutely loathe that a premise that has so much potential gets butchered the way this one did.

We finally get a main character who could be so unique – not only is he a scientist, which finally takes away the only approach made on these movies which is the religious one – but he can also get in people’s minds. And what do we get instead? The epitome of all clichés. And there are so many of them, don’t even get me started. There is the scruffy grief-stricken widower with nothing to lose, a religious crisis and a long time vendetta, there are his couple of sidekicks with the fancy aura reading machines (except here they are ion charges or something), and the secretive mentor and the deadly serum that the mc says he is never going to use but you so know he is gonna – and the rest is just filler for something that could be truly creepy.

Incarnation grabbed my attention from the get go, particularly with that initial dance club scene, which featured the most perfect song for the moment and gave me an almost Matrix vibe. We quickly know what is going on, what our main guy is capable of doing and how he is doing it – all through the natural sequence of the story, not because the information is dumped on the viewer. And that approach pretty much stops there.

From that point on it all went downhill. There are so many plot holes (Why call it Maggie?? Even the demons called it Maggie! It’s the name of an innocent woman, for crying out loud. Why does Ember need to almost die if he says he found out about his ability while he was sleeping? Why not just give him a powerful sedative? Why did the entity target Ember so particularly? I mean, if it wanted to keep possessing people it should have left him minding his own business, not helping anyone cause he was just trying to lead a normal life, right? Why was the boy not tied up if it was so dangerous for him to touch anyone? Come to think of it, why did it just stand there? Why did people touch Ember on the street seconds after yelling for people not to touch him? There is so much more but I forgot it in the meantime), the dialogues are cringe-worthy, whatever information needs to be delivered is dumped without much context, the kid’s mother has no heart and doesn’t really seem concerned for her son’s well-being, she is actually doing Ember a favour of allowing him to help the boy and the way things developed is just why I tend to stay away from movie theatres for months in a row. Worst of all, something that could be incredibly original turned out to be a total rip off of a movie I watched many moons ago, right down to the way it ended. Except the other one took place in some woods, I think.

*sigh*

There were definitely interesting touches here and there like the detail of the watches stopping, the fact that Ember is in a wheelchair provided some exciting scenes, and even the ending, despite being a total rip-off, had a bittersweet tinge to it considering what Felix had told Ember. However, overall I cannot say Incarnate is worth watching.